


way back up

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [50]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Disabled Character, Flashbacks, M/M, Marking, Mentally Ill Character, Pierce died too quick, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Recovery isn't linear, Steve looks after Bucky, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 15:53:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2394248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For once, here and now, there's no room for the contempt, the disgust or anything else that so often comes with this, with crawling back to clinging to Steve like a rock in the middle of a flood, sound and smell and touch and everything the good kind of familiar, known. Everything he so often has to ignore, like he's a fucking kid covering his ears and singing to drown out someone's voice, is all gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	way back up

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it. 
> 
> This was on a Hurt/Comfort Bingo prompt: "lost childhood"; it also follows (for those people reading as I post rather than coming to it in order later) [scent trigger](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2227572) immediately. 
> 
> Finally, it's not enough that I wanted to actually put the archive warning on it, but **there is a brief sense description of inflicting a catastrophic head injury** , as a note.

He wants a drink. Badly, badly wants a drink. 

It won't help. It won't help now and it didn't even help then, but in the burn down his throat and the spin in his head he could pretend it did and sometimes self-delusion is better than nothing. 

He remembers that. Surrounded by gas-lamp light and polished wood, singing, noise, tobacco-smoke and burned-London stink he'd pretended, lied to himself that the alcohol put any distance between him and the poison shit that felt like it clung to every inch of his skin. Scotch blurred his thoughts and he pretended that was the same thing. 

It wasn't. It wouldn't be. And it won't, not now, and might just make him sick, since his body seems to think vomiting is one good way to get rid of anything he poisons himself with, and what he actually wants is for everything to _stop_ , to go away, and it doesn't work like that, but (irony) in this moment memory throttles him with generations of inherited wisdom that says _drown it all in drink._

He doesn't try. 

Instead there's coffee, and he drinks it even though it's gone cold; there's the incongruous, ridiculous sounds of the little feline on his leg, as out of place as a clown at a funeral Mass, tiny and helpless and stupid and fitting nowhere in any story about him anyone could tell; and there's Steve's voice talking about people who might as well be make-believe while Bucky sits here, back against him, like a whiny kid. 

And the funny thing is he doesn't even care about that part. Well, funny if by funny you mean fucking terrifying, but he'd rather think of it as funny. For once, here and now, there's no room for the contempt, the disgust or anything else that so often comes with this, with crawling back to clinging to Steve like a rock in the middle of a flood, sound and smell and touch and everything the good kind of familiar, known. Everything he so often has to ignore, like he's a fucking kid covering his ears and singing to drown out someone's voice, is all gone. 

But it's gone because the Earth shifted. It's gone because the ground fucking tilted and threw him and there is a long, long way down and at the bottom - 

He doesn't want to think about what's at the bottom. Doesn't want to think about waking up with someone else's blood on his hands because of _nothing_ , because they said the wrong thing, had the wrong colour hair, wore the wrong fucking suit. _That's_ what's at the end of the fucking line here, the sucking mud bodies'-length deep at the bottom: drowning in that, and losing, and no fucking way back and so fucking much blood and worse that could come after. 

And oh fucking Christ how fucking frail is the line keeping him out of that, right now. With the smell still in the back of his throat, only barely covered by coffee or anything else and only when it's there - the real-world tastes, smells, they fade. The other doesn't. Stupid fucking accidents, chances, sheer fucking bad _luck_ and now he's here trying to find his way back, back across the fucking chasm opened in his head where he keeps that, keeps _all of that_ because there is the broken glass he can crawl over to try to leave it behind him and then there's _that_. 

There's that. There's _him_. And the screaming and the desperate, desperate need to feel bone snapping under his hands, to feel the give when a skull gives in and caves and crumbles, the way skin and muscle tear. 

Need so thick it makes it hard to breathe. 

There's boxes full of Pierce in his head, shit he can't burn or carve out so he locks it away instead, boards it up, skates over it like fucking thin ice when he has to and then pretends it doesn't matter. And some days, a handful, maybe - on some good days, he thinks _someday_ , maybe he can fucking deal with that, maybe he can take it out and rip it out, deal with poison and decay and taint but _not now_. Not now, _not now_ , not now. 

He's made decisions. He's made _choices_. And for that those doors stay closed, the boxes stay unopened, everything untouched, for now, for now, maybe forever, because they _have to._ Because the other way is a long, long fucking way down with locked doors and concrete walls at the other end, for a _long fucking time_ , and who the fuck knows who he'd be by the time that finished. 

(And he's thought about it, he has, every time he's too fucking tired - but _no._ ) 

(No.)

So it has to stop. It has to, he has to find a way to make this time _stop_ and it doesn't matter what it is. To get rid of the stink he can't even name, because it stops being a smell and turns into something that lights up his head, punches through his brain and tries to remake the world. 

It leaves him hoping, for the first time in his life, that Hell does fucking exist. 

He realizes Steve's said his name twice, that Steve's hand's fallen on the one Bucky's been using to keep the cat quiet and barely squeezed. "Sorry," he says, after he stops himself from saying _it's okay, I'm fine_ because the lie would be fucking absurd. 

"S'okay," Steve says, settling his arm back around Bucky's waist. "You're breathing fast again," he adds, voice so conversational it counts as it's own damn tell. 

"I know," Bucky says. Feels the cat startle when he pulls his hand away to scrub over his face, little pin-prick claws extending and retracting, the sensation bright and alive in his head. But if there's a road he could go down that would upset Steve _more_ Bucky can't think of it, so he pushes that away. 

He leans forward a little, digging one knuckle of his right hand into his temple, making himself keep his left still because right now he's likely to fucking break something. Without meaning to. 

Bucky can't stop the flinch, when Steve moves his hand back to rest on his shoulder but he says, " _No_ , it's fine," before it's finished, while inside he snarls at his body to fucking pay attention, because for the love of _God -_

"Okay," Steve says, his voice calm, and maybe he figured maybe he didn't, but there's no hesitation, no sense of his hand pulling away. He leans forward enough to kiss the last visible vertebra of Bucky's spine, the back of his head. Smooths his hand from backbone to the curve of shoulder and then back, a little lower and that, weight and pressure, touch and movement - that might help. Enough that when Steve pauses, shifting, Bucky makes himself speak, say, "Don't stop." 

"Not planning to," Steve says, same calm voice, "but I think it'd go better without your shirt in the way." 

The thought catches a second in Bucky's head but he's probably right, pretty definitely right, given that when he runs his hands up Bucky's sides under the cloth to help him take it off Bucky manages probably the first full breath since the one that choked him in the cafe. The kitten protests at the movement but he picks her up, crosses his legs and puts her in his lap, and she shuts up pretty quick, goes back to purring and trying to angle for him to scratch her chin. And it gives him somewhere to put his right hand, to keep it away from his left. 

Or vice versa. 

The air is cooler, but it isn't bad; Steve must've turned the temperature control up when he came in. And the difference mostly makes Steve's hands two points of heat: left at Bucky's hip, just above where denim ends, thumb stroking his back over his kidney and fingers resting still against his belly; right back to his shoulder, but moving. 

Steve's thumb traces down the skin over vertebrae, palm over the top of Bucky's shoulders, fingers just brushing his collar-bone. Draws the line of C3 to T1 and back again, again and again, the beat of a resting pulse. A normal resting pulse. 

Then Steve draws his hand down, palm and fingers flattening against Bucky's intact shoulder to trace the bottom line of his shoulderblade over to the curve of his ribs around his side. Steve's fingers fit into the hollows between Bucky's ribs, sliding forward to ribs' edge and then back again to press his palm over the edge of Bucky's shoulder and down his upper arm, Steve's fingers finding the places that braid themselves into steel and pull tight and pressing against them, just. 

Bucky closes his eyes, leans his weight on his left hand, leans forward more when Steve's fingers stiffen and rake back across his shoulder and then down Bucky's spine to his low back until Steve's right hand rests the same way his left is, both thumbs digging into the muscle at his waist and Steve touching his mouth to the skin between Bucky's shoulderblades, one strangled by metal, one not. 

(And he can remember them cutting it open - )

And it's almost not a kiss. Or it's a kiss that doesn't mean what most kisses do, isn't standing in for words, isn't an answer or a question or an invitation to anything more, isn't about sex or want. Is just the feeling of Steve's mouth on Bucky's skin, over his bones: the warmth, heat of lips-tongue-breath and then the cool of damp skin in the air. And then another, just below. And then stops feeling like that, like anything real - just points of sensation, shivering and alive in Bucky's skull, through every nerve. Here, now, real. 

Steve kisses his way down Bucky's spine and then his left hand lets go of Bucky's waist while his right hand stays. Slides forward to rest against Bucky's abdomen instead of his waist: palm steady, fingers spread, holding him. 

And on his way back Steve leaves marks, one after the other, one on top of another. Some come with the bright buzz and tug against skin that comes from sucking kisses, some with the sting of bites. And after fingers of Steve's left hand circle each of them, one by one, as he moves the touch of his mouth up and Bucky breathes. Can breathe. 

And Christ, Steve. And - 

He was drunk when he first stepped off this cliff. He remembers that. Barely. Drunk and selfish and crazy and he doesn't really remember but he's pretty sure he never meant to live to see the end of the War anyway so maybe he convinced himself it didn't matter. That he knew what he was doing, that he could steer it all, that he was in control. And he was a fucking God-damned idiot if he managed that, to believe that lie, but he probably could and he probably did. It's the kind of thing he would have done.

And for a second the fucking enormity of that, of all of it, it hits him in the face and maybe he even takes a breath to say he's sorry, as if a confession would matter now or do any fucking good, because Steve kisses the back of his head again and says, "Shhh, Buck. It's fine, don't," like he has any fucking idea what he's talking about - but fuck, it's enough, and the thread across the blackness is still too thin to risk. 

And it's too late anyway. So far beyond too late. 

And there are white slivers of brightness now as Steve's finger's trace the edge of metal under his skin, skin over metal, lighting up nerves like a web across Bucky's shoulder and back, across his ribs and back to his spine. He lets Steve pull him back again, his back against the faint distant scrape of Steve's shirt, as Steve follows the fault down the line of shoulder and across under ribs and back again, all the way to the top. 

His right hand's resting more or less over Bucky's heart and his left stays at Bucky's shoulder, thumb and one finger on metal and the rest on skin; his arms settle against Bucky's skin, too, warm but cooler than his hands, and he rests his head against the side of Bucky's. And it's almost possible just to think about that, to stay with that, and not any fucking thing else that tries to claw its way to the top of Bucky's brain. 

Close enough, maybe. 

After a minute Steve says, "Don't be too impressed with the half-hour." His voice is wry. "Jane sent me home, so I must've looked pretty damned anxious." 

Bucky keeps his eyes closed, but the thread of amusement's enough to be distracting, too. Maybe enough. God, you fucking bastard, _please_ enough. 

Then another thought intrudes and he says, "Your leg's gonna fall asleep." 

"Mmn," Steve says, almost an acknowledgement. But not quite. "Maybe. But it hasn't yet. Yours're just as bad. Worse, you've got a cat on them." 

Bucky'd point out she weighs maybe a couple pounds, at most, but he doesn't, because the words are too far away, and guilt only had enough to push him so far. He'll probably get cold before any of that gets far enough to matter.


End file.
